Avalow has an interesting business model.
The company is presenting at TechCrunch’s Disrupt SF Startup Battlefield over the weekend, and it has a very cool way to help people garden successfully. Instead of going it alone in the garden Avalow will help you grow edible plants (or whatever you want) in a custom planter that requires a minimum amount of effort to keep going.
Unlike many of the tech startups in the market today, Avalow has a decidedly low-tech hardware offering. The company has designed, manufactured and marketed a planter that requires its owner to replenish the water only once per week. Otherwise, it is dead-simple to operate, as it has literally no other parts.
The Avalow planter can be bought on its own, or used in conjunction with a support service that connects Avalow clients with gardening experts that will not only supply information, they will also dispatch seeds and soil additives to give Avalow clients the best possible chance of being a successful gardener.
Avalow Has Cool Ideas
Avalow designed a system that makes gardening just about as foolproof as it can be. Today, most people didn’t grow up on a farm where mom and dad instilled basic gardening skills into them. Nintendo was way more fun, and everyone knows that vegetables come from a supermarket.
The move toward homegrown veggies has left many people looking for good information about how to garden, and Avalow appears to have created a cutting-edge solution for people that can’t dedicate a year or two of work to learning about how to garden the hard way.
Avalow’s planter is super easy to use. At $400 USD it isn’t exactly cheap, but it is built to last a quarter century according to the company. Some parts may need to be replaced every five years, and overall it is a very good idea that makes gardening more water-efficient, and less time-intensive.
The planter uses a passive watering system that allows the plants to absorb the water they need from below the soil, via capillary action. Just check on the water level every week (maybe a little more often if it is super hot outside), and keep an eye out for pests. Other than that, the planter does the rest!
Amazing Service Option
If you have zero idea what to do when it comes to soil mixtures, compost, and fertilizer, Avalow has you covered.
For $120 USD per season, you can also enlist the help of an on-demand gardening expert, which will make any gaps in your gardening knowledge go away. Just ask the expert, and they will sort you out.
Avalow isn’t a cheap option for young gardeners, but when you look at it as an education, it seems a lot cheaper. The expert gardeners that Avalow hires have decades of experience and will be able to educate you while you watch your fresh veggies grow.
A semester at a university isn’t going to get you to the same level of know-how as an expert gardener, but it will set you back a lot more than the $520 USD that an Avalow planter with a season of support will cost.
Most universities also don’t hand out seeds and soil additives, which are both included with Avalow’s support service.
Avalow Makes Gardening Easy
If you want to get into gardening and you can afford to spend a few hundred dollars, the Avalow system is an amazing opportunity. The planter from the company is tip-top, and won’t eat up a lot of your time. Having access to expert gardeners is a great feature, and may help people who never thought they could grow their own produce to start harvesting healthy, fresh produce!
